


Bad Habits

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Smoking is bad for your health. So is irritating your rival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Habits

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from my tumblr. Marianne is fem!France.

“You started smoking again? …No, never mind,” Arthur says, already correcting himself before Marianne can even raise one groomed eyebrow, letting the balcony door wing shut behind him to stop the cigarette smoke wafting back inside the building. He’d wanted somewhere private to make a phone-call, their break in the meeting. “Of course you’d start smoking again. It’s an easy way to piss me off.”

Marianne only smiles – it’s bright lipstick she’s wearing today, glossy scarlet to match her blouse, the French lady in red with a glowing cigarette in one hand. Very classic, and she’s long since perfected her foreign drawl. “Are you missing your nicotine rush, darling?”

Bitch. He’d quit so that his politicians and America would stop bending his bloody ear about it, and so that he didn’t have to leave the bar and wobble his way outside to light up after one pint too many. But _still –_

“Smoking,” Arthur tells her primly, quoting a quarter of his noble country and ignoring the third that now bitch about having to go stand outside and smoke in the rain, “is extremely bad for your health, and is a vulgar and unsociable habit.”

“I did not come out here to have a _conversation,_ Angleterre,” Marianne informs Arthur in reply – and oh, she blew that smoke at him _deliberately,_ he knows she did, wreathing grey wisps around them both. They’re cheap fags she’s getting through, surely, and undoubtedly shitty French ones at that, but – “kind,” Marianne goes on, and sodding _smirks_ when she catches him watching her tap away the ashes of her cig-end on the nearby railing, “as your great concern for my health might be.”

Arthur _dearly_ wants a fag. “I hope you burn your sodding skirt.”

“And smell of smoke all day?” Marianne raises the cigarette to her red mouth again, lipstick kisses and her lips look full and soft. Nicotine cravings are (caused by) a bitch. “You’re nearly having an aneurism as it is, just from _this_. You get this…little nervous _twitch_ thing -”

Arthur counts this as a bad day, and slaps away Marianne’s hand when she reaches to poke for his temple.

She just laughs at his growl. “It’s very cute.”

Arthur _glares_ in reply, and leaves the balcony in a defiant door- _slam._

Marianne comes to sit beside him when the meeting starts up again, blithely affectionate as she half drapes over his shoulder, purrs nonsense in his ear. She smells of smoke.

Arthur gives her five minutes, but when her hand drops to stroke the inside of his thigh he shoves her straight off the other side of her chair.

Marianne hits the floor with an inelegant _squawk._

The meeting room stares at them.

“My apologies,” says Arthur, and smiles at the room. “Nervous tic.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can’t smoke indoors on public property in England, anymore. ‘Indoors’ counts as anything with three walls and a roof – so yes, this includes some bus shelters. A lot of pubs now tend to offer shelters outside some of their back doors for smokers; a few even splurge out on heaters.


End file.
